Top 10: Modern Adventurers

Dubbed “the real Indiana Jones,” Parfitt found what he believes to be a descendant of the Ark of the Covenant. His journey started in the 1980s when he met members of the Lemba tribe, an ethnic group in southern Africa who are believed to have a common ancestry to the Jews of ancient Israel. The Lemba told Parfitt stories of a “ngoma” — a wooden container used for storing sacred objects. Parfitt soon came to believe that the object may be the lost Ark of the Covenant. It was then that Parfitt began his 20-year quest. He started in the Zedekiah’s Cave beneath Jerusalem. To describe it in Indiana Jones terms, the red line on the map left Jerusalem for Jordan, then to Yemen, stretching to Egypt, Ethiopia, and landing in Zimbabwe. His work was the subject of a 2008 documentary and a book.